I am here. Me, my life; there, somewhere among the fallen ruins of what I thought would save me. Silent voices are calling good-bye, and I let go. Betraying hands lose their grip, and I drift away. No safety shore behind me, no horizon somewhere ahead. The stirring sounds of rising waters are unmerciful refusing to show the way. Fog and mist cry tears of balm over my bruised and battered soul, my shaved emotions. I reach for the love birthed by a dream, birthed by the echoing words of a stranger’s past, a heart calling out a victory story to the harsh and hurting. Pavement, concrete, and steel all turn to him, all turn to me, speaking beautiful wishes. What can seep a ray of hope into the veins of a shattered illusion? I’m spread-eagle, free-falling, standing still. The clay beneath my feet crumbles, and I have a ticket to sail unbound, unsealed, unraveled, and undefined. I am forever soaring high like a butterfly on the wings of an unruly breeze. I laugh and cry and scream into the endless blue above for millions of deaf ears to hear. I drift over the deep while thousands of blind eyes observe my passing. Day and night will rise and fall, and fall, and fall. I am all of this. This is all of me.

Crime and punishment is a complex system. For centuries there has always been an attempt to keep a moral code within society. Throughout the centuries punishment for crimes committed has taken on various forms and approaches hoping for a resolve. It has taken from the seventeenth century up to this day to design programs and buildings hoping to meet the needs of the offenders, in balance with the degree of crime committed, with the goal of rehabilitation.
In Meithe Terrance’s, Punishment Philosophies And Types of Sanctions, he explains the “retributive principle of lex talionis, or let the crime fit the punishment” (Meithe). From the seventeenth century continuing unto this day, punishments have ranged from “exile of country, chastity belts, stockades for humiliation purposes and restraint, boycotts, suspended trading, electronic shackles, harnesses control for children, house foreclosures, even censorship of public speaking,” plus more (Meithe ). Punishing the crime was measured by the degree of the crime rather than the offender. Regardless of how elaborate the buildings have become, or how structured the programs are, not everyone has the same experience while incarcerated, nor is rehabilitation guaranteed.
The idea of imprisonment began in the seventeenth century with the mandatory quarantine of the town’s people during a plague. In Michel Foucault’s, Part Three: Discipline 3. Panopticism, he explains Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon design, which seemed to be the ultimate answer to incarceration. His hopes were to build a criminal’s paradise where all convicts, the evil, and the corrupt, could come to rehabilitate into a working-class individual. Bentham said it was going to be a “laboratory,” a machine to carry out experiments. Also, “to alter behavior, to train or correct individuals, and to experiment with medicines and monitor their effect.” The Panopticon would be an alternative solution to the problem of the more barbaric forms of incarceration, possibly a luxury idea (Foucault). It would be a “mechanism to control the masses inside of the building.” The Panopticon was designed “to avoid those compact, swarming, howling masses that were to be found in places of confinement.” It was a circular type of building, where guards who were stationed within and could keep all the inmates in the surrounding cells under constant surveillance, along with one high tower in the middle (Foucault). This was a blueprint dream for prison, punishment, and rehabilitation.
Not everyone is going receive the same mental or emotional benefits from a stretch of incarceration. Not everyone will have an awakening as hoped for by the justice system. Thoreau describes his epiphany while he was incarcerated for refusing to pay his taxes. He talks about having read all of the literature there, like traveling into a far country, and it seemed he had never heard the sounds of the town in which he lived, even the strike of the town clock, until that one night spent incarcerated. He felt like “. . . an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn.” The incarcerated experience for Thoreau proved to suddenly have awareness to the life going on around him. He describes feeling almost like a stranger in his own hometown. This was one theory the Panopticon was said to serve. “. . . to induce in the inmate a state of conscience and permanent visibility” (Foucault).
The basic idea of punishment and imprisonment is to detain or to delay the offender from continuing in his or her criminal behavior (Meithe 17-18). There is also the hope for a reformed and productive lifestyle when released back into society. Rehabilitation is accomplished to an extent, but it seems people who are imprisoned may have rehabilitated on the level of prison life rather than the immediate society in which they live, yet making them more aware of the outside world. This seems to be only a utopian theory. Meithe talks about deterrence and the “relationship between sanctions and human behavior” (Meithe 20). He claims that only a small percent result in arrests and convictions. “The typical criminal penalty and civil suits are often imposed or resolved months, if not years, after the initial violation. He also states because of plea bargaining, reducing charges, jury nullification’s, clemencies, pardons, and good time leniency, “the severity of punishment actually received by offenders is often far less than mandated by law” (Meithe 22). Rehabilitation can’t happen unless the offender is incarcerated by the system who administers the programs.
Meithe says that “some degree of moral and spiritual enlightenment was expected of those condemned to those for long periods of solitary condiment.” In Henry David Thoreau’s, Civil Disobedience, after his experience with incarceration, in which he before-hand had been so proud to serve, says, “Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made . . . Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” (Thoreau). After his experience of solitude in confinement, he’s now questioning again, whether to obey or not to obey laws that he still views as unjust. Many who are paroled soon forget the pain of being locked out of society and soon offend again.
Some are imprisoned to hold them back from accomplishing what might be a threat to a social group or government change. When justice becomes unjust in a clever disguise of the law, it is a violation of power. Meithe talks about “false positive,” which means, falsely labeling someone as a high-risk offender.” After his arrest for leading a peace march, in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he asks of the law enforcement, “In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence.” The government considered him to be a high threat of obtaining his goals of equality for the black race. Martin Luther King Jr. tried to rehabilitate the outside world against the cruel brutality of racial prejudice. He also says, “I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends . . . but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice.”
In H. Bruce Franklin’s, prison writing in 20th-centurty America, he talks about the lighter side of imprisonment and about a collection of African-American convict prison songs, “that shaped the blues tradition at the heart of much twentieth-century American music.” He calls this collection “an astonishing contribution to American and world culture” (Franklin 6). American political prisoners such as “Emma Goldman, Alexander Berman, and Carlo de Fornaro,” to name a few, were authors of books written while in prison, as were most books in the “first two decades of the twentieth century” (Frank 9).
Franks says that when prison literature exploded in the late 60’s, the authors were Americans on the bottom of society. Malcolm X read the entire dictionary while in prison to educate himself, learning how to read and write. From out of prisons, “dropouts, rejects, criminals, and rebels in American society, gained their power for writing” (Frank 13). This may be the largest and most important form of rehabilitation.
However, one absolute is that the acts of crime and punishment are not limited to gender or race, but may be limited to “certain conditions” of the offender such as mental disease, defect, immaturity, or prior offenses (Meithe). Punishment against crime is moral rightness against wrong doing. Meithe says the ultimate goal of incarceration is to restore the convict to a constructive place in society through a combination of treatment, education, and training. To some extent, this combination may be helpful, but it has never been a magic pill for permanent reform.
Punishment and imprisonment has taken on many forms since the plague. Foucault says, “Against the plague, which is a mixture, discipline brings into play its power . . . a whole literary fiction of the festival grew up around the plague . . .” Incarceration is a mixture of minds, emotions and personalities. Discipline brings into play the power of these minds and personalities to create many unusual outcomes, such as books, new rules, new laws, and new awareness not only sometimes to self, but also, sometimes to expose corruptions within the walls of confinement. The Panopticon idea didn’t control the maddening and swarming masses within the prison walls. It didn’t make an ideal society within. However, from the Panopticon idea, the hope for rehabilitation for a better society still remains.
Imprisonment is only the face of what goes on inside behind the construction of a building or institution. The outcome is a birth of new realities, good and bad, not only for those who are on the inside, but for those who are on the outside looking in.

I then knew my life was at an end. My organs within me burned and I felt the sensation of a jellied substance ooze from my flesh. Tears filled my eyes as I thought of my family back home awaiting my return–a return that would never happen. My knees weakened and began to buckle as I felt the poison from this alien being invade my body. I struggled to pull free but it was too late. It was over. I felt unconsciousness overtake me as my soul slipped out from its temporary home. My mother had warned me about these aliens–these Human Beings.

If we can dissect the basics of love, we can just as easily do the same with life in general. We are three-quarters water. So which are we more? Water or flesh? And why don’t we drown in our own compound? How does our skin restrain from busting open under the pressure of the water we retain? Is it the heart beating that keeps us alive, or is it the soul, or is the oxygen? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The dinosaur or the caveman? Will we ever have a pluralistic society? No. Was slavery legal and right? Plantation owners and slave owners said, ‘yes.’ Abraham Lincoln and God said, ‘no.’ Do you need to love people to write, or edit? Back to which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Salvation On Sand Mountain, by Dennis Covington, gives us an insight into the religious practices and the private lives of a very unique group of people living in the northeastern Alabama, northwestern Georgia, Appalachian Mountain chain. The meaning of the word “salvation” for these people holds a different meaning than the standard term of God saving their soul. Their sense of salvation is something that is continuously sought out and has to be proven time and time again to their selves, and to those around them who indulge in the practice of the religion. The power of belief in the unseen, or a sensation, and the need to unify with like minds, to feel a part of a community, can propel an individual into acts that may seem crazy to the outside world. For this group of people, the feeling of power that comes to them by the handling of poisonous rattles snakes and copper head snakes, surviving multiple venomous bites, and drinking strychnine, is their challenge for displaying their keeping of the faith. This ritualistic organization seems to hold their community together. Insecurities, fears, lack of self-identity, are the inner forces that drive these people into submitting to a higher power, not only that which is in a heaven above, but rather a forbidden act that gives them the sense of self-worth, self-control, and acceptance by those in their immediate community. The snake handlers pass down this ritual from generation to generation. They believe they are predestined to do so and they feel it’s an honor. They are even willing to die for the cause. In all cases, their fathers and forefathers were snake handlers for the faith.
The surrounding circumstances of these types of people, poor, some uneducated, and sense of obligation, induce the need to dominate their object of choice, the need to control something, to have power over something that can even possibly cause their death, seems to be their need in order to feel worth.
Seeking to feel and experience the unseen is a way to strengthen one’s faith, as if God did something mysterious for him, finding the great favor of God. They want to feel it; they want to believe it, so some make it happen. Believing one has to be in the spirit in order to not be bitten by the snakes determines who handles the snakes. The ultimate devotion and loyalty to the cause, is to die unattended by medical provisions, and some want more bites as their going down. The more snake bites that one survives, the larger and more dangerous the snake that one handles, the more spiritual the man is deemed, making him higher up on the holiness chart because he has supposedly obtained an amazing higher faith that Jesus proclaims makes you a marked follower of His (NIV Mark 16:17-18).
However “around eight thousand people in the United States are bitten by poisonous snakes.” But “only a dozen or so die” (147). This is if they have immediate medical attention. But in the in the snake handlers faith and belief in God to protect them, there are instances in the book where people have been raised from the dead, as it is told. Also, for people to survive the bite of a rattle snake and copper head snake without medical attention, does take a divine intervention. To say that these practices are all in their minds would be not interrupting the book correctly, and over-looking these amazing facts (131). Certainly this would be a powerful attraction for someone who is an on-looker.
In observation of the events told in this book and the way it relates to religion, I have the opinion that a person can become drawn to even the most outrageous religion if there is a trace of identification, history of ancestors, insecurities, fear, lack, and the need to be accepted by society or community or individual relationships, or possibly rebellion against the norm. Even if someone has no desire at the start, one could possibly turn their lives over to a religious ritual no matter how much one rejects the idea to begin with. Curiosity can turn a person’s mind and heart to convert to a religion by repeated exposure to its particular practice. Dennis Covington was a “freelance journalist stringing for the New York Times” wanting to write an article (242). He paid a visiting to Sand Mountain and began believing he was called to be a snake handling Preacher. After watching these people handle snakes, he said, “I wondered what it would be like being bitten by a rattlesnake. I wondered if there would be any pleasure in that, coming close to death and surviving.” I think maybe some people can be hypnotized or captured by an idea or ritual if they are compelled to any of the criteria that are involved in the ritual. He began to think back to a time when he was a child and how he would hunt and capture non-poisonous snakes. This made him ponder the possibility that he may be predestined. He says, “I actually envisioned myself, preaching out of my car with a Bible, a trunkload of rattlesnakes, and a megaphone (236).”
Conforming to religion is a must to be like-minded. One has to agree on every aspect of what that particular religion demands that you do. If not, that person will be ostracized. For example, when Dennis Covington got up in front of the church and defended the position of women in the Bible and in the church, he was opposed by the congregation and the Preacher, who were all of his friends, those who accepted him and his wife and welcomed him with opened arms. This was also the end of his illusion and the end for his book (231-233). How are the women treated in their home after the church service is over? Are they forced to be subservient? Unfortunately, I’m not sure if anyone in a group such as this would come to the aid of someone other than for the need of prayer from a snake bite.
What can make a person desert their entire life’s past, their accomplishments, their families, their careers, and sense of direction, all for the sake of a religion that offers ideas that do not make sense, odd challenges, and a path without certain direction, and possibly a destructive end? I think everyone is in search of fulfillment and many find it in religion. I believe it’s the unconditional acceptance of those who welcome a person into a group, even if the group is a dangerous one. Some people find their salvation by taking on the identity or persona of a group, one that makes them feel safe, secure, accepted, powerful, and fearless. Whoever offers the best idea for life’s salvation is where a person will find their Shangri la.

One of my favorite memories as a little girl is sitting at the kitchen table with my sister, filled with excitement as we watched my mother do Christmas baking. She began early on Christmas Eve morning and baked all the way until 2:00 a.m. It seemed like my sister and I would wait for hours on the first batch of goodies to come out of the oven, but tasting a sample of these extra special baked goods was worth the wait. This is when my little brother would show up. This was the only part of the baking tradition he liked. Sometimes my mother would let us girls help so we could be a part of the holiday fun and learning the process. My grandparents came from Moravia, Czechoslovakia, so there are many ethnic holiday traditions in my family. They handed down their traditions to my mother, and she handed them down to us kids. Of course as a child I took for granted the hard work and the love my mother put into these family traditions. Now looking back, my memories make me appreciate the treasure that she bestowed upon us. In our house, we didn’t bake run-of-the-mill holiday cookies. We baked European style! Baked goods called, Kolaches (co-latch-keys), little pillows of filled dough about 2×2 inch squares, along with sweet rolls called, Bukta (boot-ka), both consisting of sweet prune butter, tasty apricot butter, or sweet ground walnut meats, were a must for Christmas. These rolls are not like bread rolls. Each roll is about twelve inches in length and about five inches wide, and about two inches high. Today they have dough mixers, but my mom would knead the dough by hand over and over and over again until it was smooth, staying to her tradition, the same way she stayed to Christmas Eve super tradition.

2.

Christmas Eve super always consisted of lentil soup, tossed salad, boiled potatoes, broiled fish, and boiled fruits of figs and prunes. Before eating the meal, everyone was given a thin slice of wafer called Oplatki (o-plat-key). It was 6×3 wide and barely one-sixteenth inch thick. Breaking off small pieces of the wafer, and passing it to every person sitting at the table assures all who partake, safety for their future, never to lose their way in life. I believe this tradition has helped me to step out in life with courage to succeed. Czechs are the only ones who practice this tradition of wafers. The Russians serve a “Twelve Dish Christmas Eve Supper,” consisting of twelve entrees. The Italians celebrate, “La Vigilia Di Natale, The Eve of Seven Fishes,” along with other entrees. The Polish celebrate, “Wigilia,” a “meatless Christmas Eve meal, also known as the Star Supper, which doesn’t begin until the first star appears in the sky. Smoked salmon, caviar, pickled beets, mushrooms and other vegetables are served.”There is a great influence of mixed ethnic traditions in my community, because where I live is where many of the European immigrants settled after they arrived in New York City during the 1800 and 1900’s.

3.

The immigrants, who settled here in America, made their way to many of the surrounding areas where they could find work and make a decent living. Endicott-Johnson and IBM had plenty of work for them. My community is where many of Italians, Russians, Czechoslovakians, and Polish people, settled down to work in the factories. Grape vineyards for homemade wine, and small cafes serving Italian pasta dishes, helped to structure the community. Other contributors to the community were the Russian, Czechs, and Polish, who brought their fine cuisine and their practice of homemade beer, which became very popular, and still is. My mother used to tell us kids stories of our grandfather and the way he would make beer in the basement of their house. Having eight brothers and sister, they made it a family affair, mostly capping the bottles tight. Many of my uncles had smoke houses where they would hang sides of fresh bacon or ham until it was cured. They also made their own stuffed sausage, called Kielbasa (Keel-basa), and horseradish. You will always find the Catholic churches selling ethnic baked goods, crafts, and arts, at their Bazaars held for fundraisers. They also sell homemade, home grown foods for take-out dinners during other holiday celebrations.

4.

It’s the Catholic churches who still help keep these wonderful traditions going on. Catholicism is the preferred faith of these nationalities. The American church has preserved much of the European home-church experience of ethnicity, from the architectural structure of the high domed ceiling, splashed with paintings of angels and clouds, to the sacred statues of the Holy Saints, especially the Mother of Jesus, Mary, and his father Joseph. Beautiful stained glass icon paintings of the twelve Stations of the Cross, Jesus’ journey to Calvary, line the church walls on each side. Urns filled with holy water are located at the front and back entrances of the church for the petitioners to dip in with their finger, and make the sigh of the cross as they enter the sanctuary. The sacred challis that is located in the front is closed tightly within a little tabernacle and can only be handled by the holy Priest. All others are forbidden. When I was a child I really believed that God and Jesus lived in the little tabernacle located on the mantel behind the front podium. I also believed that the Catholic holy water could kill vampires; this from watching monster film festivals. I loved to recite the rosary beads, which is a practice of repetitive prayers. The rosary looks similar to a long necklace with a crucifix pendant. Each bead represents a prayer that you speak as you move around the necklace and back to the crucifix where you began.

5.

Czechoslovakian beautifully designed egg art, originated at the Monasteries made by the Catholic Monks in Rome Italy. Hand sketched goose eggs are the choice in Czechoslovakia, but in the Western World, the use of chicken eggs is very popular. The yolks of the eggs are delicately drained from the egg by inserting a hole at the top and bottom. They are then dipped by hand in lacquer or acrylic paint in a variety of brilliant colors of red, purple, green, pink, even black, and much more. After they are dried, they are dipped in colored wax, sealing the holes. After the wax is dried, amazing designs and pictures can be carefully etched out on the egg with fine, sharp tools, done by a very skilled hand. Different materials including bee’s wax, straw, watercolors, onion peels, stickers are used to decorate the eggs. As a part of the tradition in Czechoslovakia, on Easter Monday young girls give their decorated Easter eggs to the boy of their crush. Today, during the Easter season, the Catholic churches will make and sell these painted eggs, along with the Kolaches, nut roll, lekvar roll, poppy seed roll, and apricot rolls. We used try to collect these pieces of egg art, but they were expensive and hard to find because they sell out quickly. However, my grandfather worked the craft so we had several to keep.

6.

The Catholic religion has another tradition. The day before Easter Sunday, the parishioners fill a basket with these baked goods, cheeses, eggs, meats, salts, and wine. They bring these amazing decorated baskets to the altar overflowing with goodies. Beautiful colored bows are tied to the handles with embroidered cloths to cover the contents inside. Each of the food pieces represents something. Some also put candy in the baskets. The hard-cooked eggs symbolize new life or Christ rising from his tomb. Bread represents the bread of life given by God. Meat and sausages are symbols of the resurrected Christ, horseradish represents accepting the bitter with the sweet in life, and vinegar symbolizes the sour wine given to Jesus on the cross. Salt is to add zest to life and preserve us from corruption, and sweets suggest the promise of eternal life or good things to come. There is a noon mass, and the baskets are lined up at the altar. It’s quite a sight to see. The Priest comes out and blesses the baskets with Holy Water, says a prayer, and tells a story about the tradition of the food baskets. The story is about the beginning of this Catholic tradition. The people would bring their food in baskets to the church to be blessed because they had been fasting in honor of the Easter celebration. The Priest had to make the foods holy by praying over the baskets and blessing them with holy water before it was eaten. Today, many of the parishioners fast the entire day and night before Easter Sunday, then eat their basket of food at home after the morning mass.

7.

The Catholic Churches keep the tradition by honoring Moravian Day. Those in the congregation participate with attire, the clothing worn by the men and women who live in Czechoslovakia. Usually after the church mass, they will have a luncheon buffet and the dancers will perform for those who attend the luncheon. Czech/Moravian traditional costumes are beautifully embroidered, and consist of quite the get-up. For the women, bloomers, undershirt, white blouse with flouncy sleeves and vest, layers of petticoats, full red shirt, apron, belt, black boots, and accessories are brightly displayed, including a colorful head scarf. Men dress in black pants, boots, embroidered vests, a decorative belt, and a black hat with a red scarf hat band. These days, it’s rare to find a Moravian Club or Organization where these ethnic traditions can be carried out. In these Czechoslovakia, or Moravian Clubs, not only ethnic dress and good dancing is involved, but lots of good Czechoslovakia Moravian food.

8.

Haluski is a Polish and Slovakian dish of origin. Haluski is made with fried noodles and sweet cabbage, butter, onion, and salt to taste. Klobasy, a polish type of seasoned sausage, can also be added to the dish to make heartier meal. Perogies are a type of boiled dough resembling the size of raviolis, filled with cheese or mashed potatoes, and fried in caramelized onions with butter. Some people use olive oil instead. I still use the standard butter for my Haluski and Perogies. The taste is too wonderful to not do so. Globs of sour cream on the top of the fried Perogies give them that extra flavor. Halupki is also another very popular food. A head of cabbage is boiled to tender. While it cools, a pound or more of beef, pork, or veal, and egg, is mixed in a bowl with cooked white rice, seasoning of choice, to taste. Take the leaves of cabbage one by one, fill with the meat mixture and roll it tightly to resemble a pillow. Lay it in a very large baking pan, one on top of the other. Continue with this pattern until the cabbage is used up. Then pour tomatoes sauce generously over the stuffed cabbage. Lay a few bacon strips on the top of the cabbages and then bake about an hour. I’ve learned to spice-up my Halupki by using a thicker tomato paste, with extra seasoning, and use bacon stripes also between the layers of the stuffed cabbage. I must confess that I have never made the hand sketched eggs, nor have I learned the Moravian dance, but I can bake the traditional baked goods and meal dishes. I’m glad to have been able to experience the wonderful traditions of my ethnic roots. I can only hope that the generations to follow will carry on.

According to the 2008, it seems that religion, no matter what denomination or sect, regardless of the mutual idea that religion can remedy all situations, seem to cause more problems and complications in society, than not. As for the atheists, 49% agree with this statement, although I see they cause complications trying to tear religion down (Landscape Survey 15). Interestingly, 74% of US citizens believe in heaven, while only 59% of them believe in hell (Landscape Survey 33). I see this as denial, when the Bible clearly states that there is a hell waiting in the end for those who have denied the deity of God and His son, Jesus Christ. On the chart shown on page 33 in chapter one of The Public Forum on Religion and Public Life, had they listed Christian or Non Denominational along with the others, their mark would have read 100% mark for believing that there is a heaven, and 100% mark for believing that there is a hell. Why they are not on listed the chart is a mystery to me and feels a bit discriminatory. So technically, this would raise the percentage of those who do and do not believe in heaven and hell, therefore making the statistics incorrect.

I tend to believe that religion causes conflict if used as a weapon such as in radical demonstrations, protests for a cause, or raging an outright war such as the Protestant/Catholic War in Ireland, lasting for decades, killing thousands of Scotts and English Protestant settlers during the year of 1641 (Irish Confederate Wars Wikipedia). Religion seems to conflict with the standard Hollywood ideals. It also conflicts with woman’s rights, the choice for pro-abortion. Many people have tied themselves to abortion tables or lay under cars to prevent women from committing the act at an abortion clinic. A few doctors have been murdered by religions do-gooders (Demotex). Hate crimes are committed in the name of religion, such as the radical Muslim religion, Islam; the Twin Towers for example. Murder is what their god demands. The Klu Klux Klan is based on extreme hate for the Black race, Jews, and the gay society (Voices yahoo.com).

I find that religion and society is not so much a matter of influence, but rather, indirectly, it’s opinion and practicing of that opinion, more often forcibly. The larger percent of religious groups will always have a stronger voice. For example, just because Christians are completely 100% anti-abortion, and anti-gay marriage, will not change or influence the outcome of a government bill. Gay marriage still prevails in several states and abortion still goes on, opinion or not. Other religious controversies include great debates about displaying the Ten Commandments in certain venues, using the word God in the pledge of allegiance, prayer in school, and even using the name of God printed on money. The Atheists and other non-religious groups seem to fight harder to remove anything that has to do with God from the public eye, adding to the fight for religious freedom.

Religion may tend to shape political views to a degree. I believe depending on what a certain religion believes in, will depend on what candidate gets the most votes by various groups, and depends upon the words of promise that the candidate speaks ahead of time, before Election Day. However, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, claim to be liberal, so their vote is basically redundant. (Landscape Survey 17). As a personal experience, those who are of the Jehovah Witness religion do not vote at all. Could it be that possibly because these religions are rallying for nothing to help them in the present or future is why they are all lackadaisical toward politics? Basically, it would then seem that the majority of those who shape political views would be the Democrats and the Republicans, and whatever other religious sect this would involve.

Religion within the prison walls appears to be an entity in itself. According to the Pew Forum, it is crucial to continue to have religious outlets for the incarcerated. Considering the chart below, it is obvious that religion is used for a form of control by certain sects within the prison. I’m not sure if it is a productive idea for the prison system to make accommodations such as this. I feel that this could be encouraging the inmates that prison is not punishment but rather a place of freedoms that even the outside world would not be willing to accommodate. I believe the prison systems are possibly trying to sidebar the reality of where the inmate is and why they are there. While I do believe religion should be accessible in the prison system, I don’t believe it should be so extreme to those who demand accommodations (PewForum: Religious Accommodations). Just as the Catholic religion is a cult and a society in its own rite. The Pope plays a major role in the Catholic world. The Pope acts as a dictator. He calls the rules and laws and then removes the rules and laws and the people follow whichever way he desires. He even has the power to declare an aberration to be or not to be authentic. Also, the Priest in the Catholic religion, by their law, is the only one who can talk to God exclusively to ask forgiveness of the petitioner’s sins (Wikipedia Duties of a Priest). As big a part that the Pope may play in the Catholic religion, his influence counts for nothing in government and political decisions. He is a dictator in his own right. His position is one of controlling masses of people. It is also interesting that the people are afraid to not follow his laws. Whereas those who are non-denominational feel they can sin and repent and sin and repent and all is well under the mercy of a forgiving God. I think if a person is facing the pleasure of sin, then looks ahead knowing they will face a man in a confessional booth to proclaim their offense, they are more likely to not go ahead with their fornication, where as the Christian follower of Jesus may take the chance and sin, knowing he or she can go into his or her own room and confess directly to God and be forgiven. Who is more likely to obey the laws of God?

I believe it’s pretty much agreed that religion can harm or help society around the world. It is agreed that we need someone or something to fill the everlasting void we feel within. Some people feel that supernatural happenings are required to constitute the function of a religious belief or sect. Belief in God can either help or heal. And many don’t agree on what happens in the end. I guess it depends on the demographics.